Saying the public school board is endangering students’ lives, about 140 union members and students protested the layoffs of two dozen mental-health support workers on Wednesday.

Jim Mulville, president of the bargaining unit that represents the 25 para-professional employees, urged the Upper Canada District School Board trustees to hold an emergency meeting to reinstate the employees who were chopped in the board’s cost-cutting budget.

Mulville cited statistics to show that the student support workers intervene in an average of one suicide attempt by students each week.

The workers provide one-on-one support for some of the 33 per cent of board students who suffer from anxiety, depression and self-esteem issues, Mulville said during the demonstration in front of the board’s Brockville offices.

When students with anxiety and depression return to school in September, they won’t find any support workers to help them, said Mulville, who is one of the laid-off employees.

“Who will be there to support these students? With the loss of all student support workers: no one,” Mulville told the crowd, many of them dressed in red.

Mulville said the board has no contingency plan to deal with the board’s “most vulnerable students, who will be stranded” after the support workers are gone.